Trump's Tax Cut is More Class Warfare

by Deacon Blues

While Trump's "Katrina" debacle continues in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, he attempted to seize the tax "reform" narrative today by spinning his cultists on his likely proposal, from the congressional GOP's "Big Six", an updated wish list of tax cuts that does nothing whatsoever for working families.

According to the Center on Budget Policies and Priorities (CBPP) and the Tax Policy Center, the GOP's ideas for tax "reform" would all benefit the wealthy and corporations (natch), and Trump himself.

•The top 1 percent of households (those with incomes above $700,000) would get roughly 50 percent of the framework’s net tax cuts, or roughly $150,000 a year on average.

•The top 0.1 percent of households (those with incomes above $3.8 million) would get roughly 30 percent of the framework’s net tax cuts, or about $800,000 a year, on average.

As CBPP noted,

The Big Six framework adjusts numerous individual income tax provisions, but the end result would likely be close to a wash for many low- and middle-income families.

Want proof?

•A married couple with one child claiming the standard deduction would get no tax cut if they earn $24,850 or below.

•A married couple with one child earning $48,700 (the median income in 2015 for a working-class family of that size) and claiming the standard deduction would get a net tax cut of just $180.

Oh, but the estate tax would be eliminated, pass-through taxes would be cut drastically, and the corporate rate would be slashed to 20% with no guarantees that the reduced tax burdens would generate new jobs. In other words, this is just another typical GOP tax giveaway to Wall Street and the donor class, that saddles working America with mountains of public debt and ever-widening income inequality. Class warfare indeed.

I'm sure Trump will now be able to explain to the cultists why they should swallow this as the biggest middle class tax cut ever.